Product Description

What is Body Rolling? Body Rolling is a therapeutic self- care practice for body therapy practitioners and an educational tool used by body therapists to empower clients to develop a deeper and more subtle relationship with their own bodies. Body Rolling improves any type of body- oriented practice, from massage and physical therapy to bodywork, yoga teaching, fitness training, and somatic therapies such as Feldenkrais and Alexander technique. Developed through seventeen years of bodywork practice, Body Rolling is an experiential approach to learning the language of anatomy. Body Rolling will help you maintain the health of your own neuromuscular and skeletal systems. It helps you learn to listen to the useful information the body communicates to you, making it possible to develop greater control over your internal state and increase your ability to use your body more freely and intelligently, whether in your body therapy practice, for exercise or just in daily life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11678 in Sports & Outdoors
• Brand: Yamuna
• Model: 0409

Features

• 10 inch diameter ball is softer, allowing you to sink deeper into the ball
• Recommended for beginners, people with injuries and the elderly
• Use for massage and fitness programs
• Helps to lengthen muscles
• Aids in muscle release

Customer Reviews

Yes to the ball, the book, but ditch the DVDs
I am enjoying "body rolling" and I am able to see immediate benefits. I have even suprised myself at how I want to and look forward to "getting on the ball." My only criticism is the supporting DVDs. They lack quality and integrity. Here's my initial reaction when I watched the YBR Total Body Workout DVD and the Leg Routines DVD:

The videos lack quality:

1) The camera often focuses on the instructor's face instead of the action/exercise that's taking place.

2) On several occasions you cannot see the action that is being performed because another person is blocking the camera's view. This occurs because the person who is the immediate subject is not the closest to the camera.

3) You cannot see a particular movement because the camera is showing the back of the person as opposed to the front where the action/movement with the ball is taking place.

4) Each routine begins with a pre-instruction. During the pre-instruction Yamuna takes the ball and explains what will happen as she rolls it up/down the front/side/back of the participant. You can't skip over the pre-instruction without pressing your own DVD's fast forward button.

5) At times the instructor mentions that a move can be modified, but the modification isn't shown.

6) Although the video may follow an actual class format, this type of format does not lend itself to home viewing/usage, e.g., in one of the videos the class is instructed to get up and walk around to see how they feel. Additionally, a "one-to-one" format (instructor and one person) as opposed to a "class" format (instructor to 6- 8 people) would have been better suited especially since all participants in the video don't come across as equal practioners; further you don't need to watch the others - they translate into "noise."

The videos lack integrity:

1) The Leg Routines DVD is just a rehash of the leg routines in the Total Body Workout DVD.

2) The Leg Routines DVD is not a 40 minute workout. It may be 40 minutes in length, but it does not equate to 40 minutes of movement.

3) The background in both DVDs lack visual interest and stimulation. To be perfectly honest, they look like videos made by amateurs and not a professional company.

The Bottom Line:

Get the book, get the ball, get the pump! But, if you must purchase a DVD, make it the Total Body Workout DVD. It'll be enough here to satisfy the visual learner and introduce you to the body rolling techniques for the various body parts, but again don't expect a continuous routine/work out.

My rating:

I rated this item a 4 instead of a 5 because of the weakness in the DVDs. For a 5 rating, everything would have had to been excellent -- the book, the DVD, and the ball. Unfortunately, the DVD (sub par content, execution, and integrity) prevents a "5".

wonderful!
This product has made a huge difference in my ability to control my pain and stiffness.
After a lifetime of action, running, yoga, biking, I became stiff and unable to do anything I loved. Spent a lot of money at the chiro, plus deep tissue massage, plus sacrocranial, plus everything I could find.
I do Body Rolling before yoga, the book is extremely helpful!the tape and DVD get boring. Body Rolling followed by YIN YOGA has kept me pain free for almost a month.
Please, if you are living at the chiro, and yoga and pilates is not helping try this!Please read her book to understand why it works.
***** 2007 update, still doing well, have added a foam roller***

Extremely Difficult to Use, Very Painful, But Good Benefit
I purchased this product about a year ago from the Body Rolling company. I wanted the DVD versions of the workouts.

They were very expensive. The ball, however, is worthwhile. I haven't found anything else that works as well as it does for this program.

I have also been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, so maybe that's why I found some aspects of the workout so painful. I didn't have much trouble with my back muscles, just a healthy kind of pain, but the abdominal workout was excruciating. She has you put your full weight on the abdominal region on that small, sturdy ball. When I first tried the workout I made myself sick (I mean it!) from working the muscles and organs in that region. I suggest you be very careful in that part of your body.

The vidoes are really boring, so don't look for anything flashy, high tech, or even interesting. They just show you what the book taught you. It was kind of nice to do it along with the class, but it was also just really boring; not the sort of thing you want to run right back to. (It makes you appreciate the efforts of the fitness experts who do all those other great workout videos.) Also, the workouts are very short and there are a bunch of them all on separate DVDs. It's expensive and then a pain to have to keep loading up DVDs, wading through the intros and then having a tiny little workout.

Also, this Body Rolling program is very, very difficult to do. You are working a few inches off the ground on a small ball. The instructions are kind of picky, but you'd better pay attention to them so you don't break any of your floating ribs or tailbone. It takes a ton of space. You start out on this little ball and roll inch by inch down or across it and you find yourself all the way across the room or jammed up against the TV set.

I don't use this equipment much at all, but I'm still glad I bought it. I do feel good after using it, but its drawbacks either outweigh or equal its benefits.